In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

102 The New Imperialists Guam had nothing to do with the causes and little to do with the conduct of the Spanish-American War. Nonetheless, the war was an epochal turning point in the history of the Mariana Islands. The American clash with Spain grew largely out of the expansionist ambitions of highly aggressive and mostly Republican party leaders in the United States. Men such as Theodore Roosevelt, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and the influential naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan wanted to make the United States a world naval power. Mahan, a rare example of a precise military mind with intellectual vision, preached the gospel of geopolitics and nationalism, that to become a great nation the United States must extend its sea power beyond the North American continent to strategic locations in the Pacific and in the Caribbean. For Mahan, maritime geography was the bones of strategy , and trade followed the flag. By 1898, the United States had already tiptoed into Oceania as a hesitant colonial power with claims of sovereignty over several tiny unclaimed islands: Jarvis, Baker, and Howland in 1856 and Midway in 1867. Mining of fertilizer (guano) from bird droppings was the main reason for acquisition. The Americans then took a giant imperial step with the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. Next, the United States, along with Germany and Great Britain, became a member of a protectorate over Samoa. This awkward but rewarding colonial initiative led in 1899 to U.S. acquisition of American Samoa. These steps paralleled American involvement in Hawai‘i, where in 1887 the United States obtained exclusive use of Pearl Harbor for a naval station in return for which the Kingdom of Hawai‘i could export sugar duty free to the United States. In 1893, American businessmen in Honolulu, eager to have Hawai‘i a part of the United States, overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy, and in July 1898 President William McKinley annexed the islands. With dubious logic, McKinley remarked, “We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California . It is manifest destiny.” Cuba, however, not the Pacific, was the focus of American colonialism in the late 1890s. American disapproval of the autocratic military rule of Spain in Cuba was fanned by the jingoistic U.S. “yellow press,” such as William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper , the New York Journal. Cuban rebels received U.S. support, and when the American battleship Maine mysteriously blew up on a visit to Havana in February 1898, Hearst’s headlines blared, “THE WHOLE COUNTRY THRILLS WITH WAR FEVER .” Teddy Roosevelt, by then assistant secretary of the navy, wrote, “The Maine was sunk by an act CHAPTER 7 The Anglo-Saxon Way 1898–1903 The Anglo-Saxon Way 1898–1903 103 of dirty treachery on the part of the Spaniards.” In reality, no one yet knows who blew up the Maine. Roosevelt had already dispatched the U.S. Asiatic Squadron of five new steam-powered cruisers and several gunboats under the command of Commodore George Dewey to Hong Kong in order to blockade Spanish Manila should war break out. On April 25, 1898, the U.S. Congress declared war on Spain. Dewey immediately steamed for Manila, but he did not just blockade the bay. In seven hours of fighting, his squadron blew out of the water a collection of antique Spanish warships in the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1. Dewey became an instant hero and was promoted to rear admiral. The new rear admiral, however, faced an unanticipated problem: he could not capture Manila from the Spanish army because he was short of ground troops. Instead of American soldiers, Filipino rebels under Emilio Aguinaldo proceeded to lay siege to the city. Dewey feared the Spanish home fleet and sizable German and Japanese fleets in the area might attempt to relieve Manila. He cabled the Navy Department to send American ground troops and naval reinforcements urgently so that he could take Manila and Luzon. It took three weeks before the first reinforcements in the form of the cruiser USS Charleston with a contingent of U.S. Marines left San Francisco under the command of Captain Henry Glass bound for Manila via Honolulu. The Charleston was the first U.S. Navy steam-powered warship to abandon allsail rigging. Glass waited in Hawai‘i until joined by the troop transports City of Pekin, City of Sydney, and Australia, all fully loaded with U.S. Army units hastily mobilized on the U.S. West...

Share